Four Screenplays with Essays: Marathon Man - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - The Princess Bride - Misery

by William Goldman

Four screenplays written by William Goldman, with essays. Author royalties donated to the Motion Picture and Television Fund.

Contents:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Marathon Man
The Princess Bride
Misery

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Writing, Media Tie In, Essays, Plays, Reference

492 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 1997

About the author

Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956.His brother was the late James Goldman, author and playwright.

William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. Several of his novels he later used as the foundation for his screenplays.

In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). He then returned to writing novels. He then adapted his novel The Princess Bride to the screen, which marked his re-entry into screenwriting.

Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 novel) in 1979.

Goldman died in New York City on November 16, 2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. He was eighty-seven years old.

Reviews

[Kellen Quigley]

William Goldman has been one of my favorite screenwriters for years now, but reading his actual words to these movies--and his essays before with some great insight into the movies and the man himself--quickly made Goldman my favorite classic screenwriter of all time. Can't wait to read volume two!

[Danger]

This is exactly what the title says it is. One of the best and most successful novelist-turned-screenwriters of all-time, delivering four classic scripts that are as entertaining to read as they are to watch, with essays full of anecdotes to pad the whole thing out. Pure Goldman. What a guy!

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid by William Goldman has won four Academy Awards, including for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced, it is also one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – incidentally, here is the somewhat silly invitation to visit a blog where you find more than five thousand reviews on those films and many, if not most of The Greatest Books of All Time https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...



9 out of 10

I have already written my view of this motion picture https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... which was something of a classic, though I am not sure what time will do to it

William Goldman has won one of his two Oscars for this, and he wrote a marvelous book on making moving pictures https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... called

- Adventures in The Screen Trade

A good chapter of it deals with the making of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and the relationship this would create with Robert Redford, a complex human being, and not a very pleasant one at the time, 58 years ago
Paul Newman was an exceptional man, I do not remember much from this book, but I have seen recently a documentary about him and how kind, resilient, brave, dedicated, modest and a good many other things he was

Shortly after finishing work on Butch Cassidy, Robert Redford had a project he wanted William Goldman to work on, but then, with the opening of the movie, Redford changed his mind on rather flimsy, if not pathetic reason:

- His fans had an image of him and they would be disappointed with the project

Nevertheless, the two had another chance, when All The President’s Men https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... would be proposed
William Goldman would work hard on this very difficult production, he explains in the book how nearly impossible it seemed, with all the dialogue and the other challenges, and the communication with Redford was a burden

The writer would have to talk to the secretary, she would call Redford, who was the producer and would star in the film, and then get back to Goldman, and then we have a nadir, the worst day in the author’s life
The producer calls him for a meeting in New York, and then when he arrives, he introduces Carl Bernstein – one of the two legendary journalists who exposed Watergate – and says that he is going to write the screenplay

The question ‘what do you mean, he will?’ and appropriate for this would be the threatening manner of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... when he asks about being funny…after all that effort, you just take away from me the achievement?

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence
Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

[Dan Seligson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best part of this great book is his introduction to each of the four screenplays themselves. Whatever posing he's doing, he does it so well you feel he's being thoroughly honest.

[Ian Carpenter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made myself read this and right away it was a huge treat. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of the most fun, upbeat reads I've had. It tears along, has a humour to almost everything and somehow manages to wrap with pathos. A lesson for me about how much fun a screenplay can be.

[Emily Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

His essays are a hoot!

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read 'Marathon Man' but couldn't find a listing for it individually.

[Dan Blackley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is four screenplays written by William Goldman. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Misery, The Princess Bride and Marathon Man.

[Trisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember my reaction when I heard a movie version was being made of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. I loved the book and was worried the screen adaptation wouldn’t live up to my expectations, as often happens. But the film turned out to be just as good as the book and now I know why. It’s because William Goldman wrote the screenplay. I’ve only read a few movie scripts before but for some reason I picked up this book which also contained the screenplays for three other movies Goldman wrote, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But it was the Princess Bride that caught my eye and was the most enjoyable to read. (Goldman’s staging directions are as entertaining as the dialogue.) I could easily visualize Florin Castle, the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fireswamp and the Zoo of Death, and follow the adventures of Buttercup, the Dread Pirate Roberts, Prince Humperdinck, Inigo, Fezzik, Vezzini and Miracle Max. Whether you read the book or watch the movie, The Princess Bride is a lot of fun thanks to its unforgettable characters, hugely entertaining scenes and memorable lines (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”) and I know I’ll be reading it again sometime. Or I could just keep renting the movie, which almost didn’t get made according to what I found out by reading the commentary that accompanied this collection of screenplays. Goldman described how he had initially written the book for his daughters (one of them wanted a story about princesses and the other wanted one about brides) and then it became a movie project that ended up taking a decade and half to finalize. I enjoyed reading about the cast, especially Andre the Giant who played Fezzik and really was as huge as he looks on screen. He was also one of the gentlest and kindest persons Goldman had ever known. It was interesting to discover that at first the movie was only a mild success mainly because the studio didn’t know how to market it. (“Just what was the movie? Was it a comedy? Fingers crossed, yes. Action flick? Fingers crossed again. . .what the hell was it? They never figured out.”) The trailer was pulled from theaters because it was so confusing, and the ad campaign kept being changed. Nevertheless Goldman maintains that it’s always been his favorite movie to make. It’s certainly always been one of my favorite movies to watch.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm working on a screenplay now and thought it might be instructive to read a few of them. Goldman is one of this country's most commercially successfully screenwriters, and Four Screenplays looked like an intriguing collection. Each screenplay is prefaced with a short essay about the film. It hadn't occurred to me until I was well into "The Princess Bride" that three of the four scripts in this volume contain disturbing torture scenes. Aside from that somewhat unpleasant fact, this was an enjoyable read. I definitely preferred the screenplays to his essays, which tend to be somewhat glib exercises in ego-maniacal name-dropping. But, I guess if I was successful as Goldman, it would be hard for me to resist mentioning all of the famous actors I've met over the years.

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 4 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the essays that accompany each screenplay. Contrary to another reviewer's complaint, you aren't "name-dropping" if you work with movie people and describe how they contributed to the shaping of your stories. And that's what I wanted to know: How did these stories come to life? I skipped 3 of the screenplays, as I've already seen 3 of the 4 movies. Goldman's a fantastic writer.

[Christopher Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The master class, and money goes to a good cause. Required reading for screenwriting students.

[Mari Hamill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed all the screenplays!